Sunday, February 23, 2014

#DWJMarch is Coming Soon!

Put on your happy faces and dancing shoes ... it's almost time for Diana Wynne Jones March! Saturday is March 1st and the kickoff day for our third glorious year of celebrating the worlds and stories of this beloved author. Luckily (and sadly), part of the world now has her last novel to read. The rest of us will just have to make do with the wonderful books we already have.

I've decided that our main purpose this year is to simply spread the DWJ love and awareness far and wide so I've created a schedule for the month of features and prompts. I would love for everyone to participate as much as they would like on any social media site, including blogs, twitter, tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest. Just tag everything with #dwjmarch so we can find it! I've created a DWJMarch tagboard so that you can follow along with all of the hashtagged fun. There's also a new DWJ March tumblr which you can submit to and share from.

For the series/book highlights, I want to see mentions of the book, photos, summaries and thoughts. I've also designated one day a week as Fan Art Friday when you can share either your own fan art or pieces you've fallen in love with from other artists. I only ask that you link back to the original source and/or give the artist's name if it's not you.

March 19th will be Giveaway Day, when anyone who wants to can host a DWJ-related giveaway. Just come to my post on that day and leave a link or hashtag it.

I'm also hosting two read-alongs --Enchanted Glass, with discussion on March 15 (so grab your copy now!) andThe Islands of Chaldea for those with a UK version of the book, with discussion on March 25. Hopefully my preordered copy arrives from Foyle's in time! If there's enough interest, we can have another read-along in April after the US release.

Here is the prompt/feature schedule by day:

Show Us Your Collection

Series Highlight: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci

Favorite Main Character

Book Highlight: Eight Days of Luke

Favorite Book Cover

Book Highlight: The Power of Three

Fan Art Friday

Book Highlight: The Time of the Ghost

Series Highlight: Howl's Moving Castle

Book Highlight: The Ogre Downstairs

Favorite Supporting Character

Book Highlight: Dogsbody

Book Highlight: A Tale of Time City

Fan Art Friday

Read-Along Discussion: Enchanted Glass

Series Highlight: Derk

Favorite World

Book Highlight: Archer's Goon

GIVEAWAY DAY!

Book Highlight: Fire and Hemlock

Fan Art Friday

Favorite Villain

Series Highlight: The Dalemark Quartet

Book Highlight: The Homeward Bounders

Early Reader Discussion: The Islands of Chaldea

Book Highlight: Black Maria (Aunt Maria)

Favorite Book/Series

Fan Art Friday

Book Highlight: The Game

Series Highlight: Deep Secret/The Merlin Conspiracy

Event Wrap-Up

Use the next few days to gather your books and get ready to read and reread, take some photos, write some posts and make some art to celebrate the brilliance of Diana Wynne Jones. I look forward to seeing what everyone does in March!

Whoa, maybe I am losing my mind. I could have sworn I'd commented on this post to say I AM SO EXCITED FOR DWJ MARCH. I have just this minute scheduled a post with a picture of all my DWJ books lined up together. Gosh, there are a lot of them (yet not nearly enough).

Fantastic! I've already taken my picture too. :) And yes, it's a big but not big enough pile -- though I've bought three more books this month so it's getting there. Of course, this also means that my unread DWJ books list is going to shrink a bit more this month too. Le sigh.